Malala Yousafzai Attends First Oxford Lecture Five Years After Near-Fatal Shooting

Your dose of hope for the day.

Oct 10, 2017 1:13am

By Mahalia Chang

Five years to the day after being near-fatally shot in the face by militants, Malala Yousafzai has attended her first lecture at Oxford University.

Yousafzai celebrated the incredible occasion with an emotion post on her Twitter, which read: “5 years ago, I was shot in an attempt to stop me from speaking out for girls' education. Today, I attend my first lectures at Oxford.”

On October 9, 2012, Yousafzai was attacked on her way home from school aboard a school bus in Pakistan’s Swat Valley. When a Taliban militant boarded the bus and asked Yousafzai to identify herself, he shot her with a single bullet which went through her head and neck, before lodging in her shoulder.

After being airlifted to a hospital in England, Yousafzai and her family relocated there. Yousafzai later went on to pen an international award-winning book, I Am Malala, set up The Malala Fund, and became the youngest ever Nobel Prize Laureate—having received the Nobel Peace Prize in 2014.

In August 2017, it was announced that Yousafzai would attend Oxford University to study a Bachelor’s Degree in Philosophy, Politics and Economics.

In response to her tweet—which has, so far, received 172,000 retweets, and 555,000 likes—there has been an outpouring of support and love.